the movement of the militant abolitionists, still but a few years old,
was beginning to set the Union by the ears. The illegitimate child
of Calvinism and the rights of man, it damned with one anathema every
holder of slaves and also every opponent of slavery except its own
uncompromising adherents. Its animosity was trained particularly on
every suggestion that designed to uproot slavery without creating an
economic crisis, that would follow England's example, and terminate the
"peculiar institution" by purchase. The religious side of abolition came
out in its fury against such ideas. Slave-holders were Canaanites. The
new cult were God's own people who were appointed to feel anew the joy
of Israel hewing Agag asunder. Fanatics, terrible, heroic, unashamed,
they made two sorts of enemies--not only the partisans of slavery,
but all those sane reformers who, while hating slavery, hated also the
blood-lust that would make the hewing of Agag a respectable device of
political science. Among the partisans of slavery were the majority
of the Illinois Legislature. Early in 1837, they passed resolutions
condemning abolitionism. Whereupon it was revealed--not that anybody
at the time cared to know the fact, or took it to heart--that among
the other sort of the enemies of abolition was our good young friend,
everybody's good friend, Abe Lincoln. He drew up a protest against
the Legislature's action; but for all his personal influence in other
affairs, he could persuade only one member to sign with him. Not his
to command at will those who "recognized him as their leader" in the
orthodox political game--so discreet, in that it left principles for
some one else to be troubled about! Lincoln's protest was quite too far
out of the ordinary for personal politics to endure it. The signers
were asked to proclaim their belief "that the institution of slavery is
founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of
abolition doctrines tends rather to promote than to abate its evils."(4)